Tag: direct method

ENGLISH LANGUAGE – AN EXPENSIVE PRODUCT

Learning languages is all about advantages. It can improve your memory by making your brain work in ways it normally doesn’t. It can broaden your horizons and take your understanding of other cultures to a whole new level. It can be that asset that will land you that higher-paying position in the company. And while being bilingual or multilingual is actually the normal thing for the majority of the population (I may talk about how and why humans are mostly bilingual in a future post), there’s still some prestige in it, depending on which languages you know. This is because some languages are politically more “interesting” than others.

That English is the most important language in the world is surely beyond dispute. It was spread round the globe during the apex of the British Empire in the late 19th century. During World War I, it started standing out as an international language, and by the late 1950’s it had already established itself as the lingua franca of the world. It all happened quite fast, in the speed of the industrial revolution, and because of the overwhelming political, military and financial influence of the United Kingdom and the United States. But although their influence is still great to this day, the scenario is a lot different, at least from a linguistic point of view.

It seems that the English language, which had traveled the world riding on the coat-tails of the UK and the USA for over a century, has finally become independent. Today, it’s the official language in other 51 countries and it’s the language of international commerce, science and foreign affairs. Brazilian tourists visiting Russia will probably use English to buy their theatre tickets. In the business dinner of a trade fair in Sweden, it’s very likely that the Arabian businessmen will communicate with their South Korean counterparts in English. And in a world in which knowledge (in particular, skills and professional qualifications) is a true and highly profitable asset or product, it’s no wonder that English has inherited from its original owners a great potential to be capitalised, monetised.

MIRACULOUS LEARNING ON OFFER

And here we finally get to the point. While language is the property of those who claim it – whatever historical, cultural or political reasons they may have for that – language teaching and learning isn’t so much so. In other words, anyone can teach any language and there’s hardly any regulation of if or how this should be done. Because of the status of English in the world, teaching it as a second or foreign language has become a highly profitable business. And in this extremely competitive market, where giant corporations duel over market dominance round whole countries and where all sorts of medium-size and small companies elbow each other to surface in the ocean of local language schools, it’s no wonder that we’re bombarded with all sorts of bizarre adverts and miraculous offers about how well (or fast, or effortlessly, or enjoyably) we can learn English. Advertising done this way, in a fashion very much likely to be referred to as confusion marketing by the experts, often misleads those trying to choose a language course.

Don’t take that bait!

Quite obviously, if you’re reading this post, it means either that you’ve somehow survived that process or that English is your native language. Anyway, please help me spread the ideas and hints in this text to those who will go through the trouble of formal foreign language instruction. Note, however, that I don’t intend to bring up the solutions to language learning problems. This is but a reflection on a few facts which I think everyone willing to take up language lessons should be aware of. In this series of four posts, I’m going to talk about common (mistaken) ideas about foreign language learning and go through a few strategies or hints that will hopefully help your friends make informed decisions about where to study English.

COMMON MYTHS

From a myriad of widespread myths about how English language is best learnt, I’ve selected just three of them, which I find specially interesting as they’re usually sold to people as truth. The first one is discussed below.

MYTH 1: Our cutting-edge methodology will make you fluent in English in 18 months

Come on, folks, let’s face it: there’s no such thing as cutting-edge methodology. Every English language school has its procedures and coursebooks guided by (or, at least, based on) one or more of the following methodological approaches:

Learning by using onlyEnglish, in order to simulate a real-life immersion into a far-fetched scenario in which the natives have no knowledge of any language other than their own (akaESL – English as a Second Language);

Learning through repetition and drilling, often triggered by pictures or short dialogues (akaaudio-lingual method); or

Learning by trying to solve problems or complete tasks that involve and require exchanging information in English with other learners (i.e. communicating with them) (akaCLT – Communicative Language Teaching).

None of those methodologies are new. The ESL approach is basically another name for the Direct Method, in vogue in the 1970’s, but whose ideas and practices can be tracked back to the second half of the 1800’s. On its turn, the audio-lingual method derived from the language courses developed in the 1960’s by the US goverment to train their military and are heavily based on behaviourist principles put forward in the late 1950’s. Finally, the CLT (or Communicative Approach, as it’s also commonly referred to) is not really a methodology, but a set of strategies and practices aiming to help create a genuine communicative setting for the target language to be used, and it was suggested in the late 1980’s.

And what about the time issue? Can anyone become fluent in English in 18 months? The answer is yes and no. First, we need to define whatever it’s meant by fluent. If they mean you’ll be able to say who you are, where you come from and what you do, and maybe to buy your own train tickets and order food from a simple menu, then yes, you may well be “fluent” after 18 months of study. Bear in mind, however, that for most institutions (and even for most people), if you have only these basic communicative skills, you’re quite far from being fluent. You will probably need at least a couple of years of frequent classes and contact with the language in order to be able to discuss misunderstandings, solve problems, persuade and get across your opinion on climate change. This is, among other things, what a fluent English speaker is usually expected to be able to do.

There are several other old methods and approaches that are still used to this day and there are also schools that shape their ways of doing things by frankensteining what they consider to be the best bits of each of the earlier methods in what has been called a post-method or post-CLT approach. At the end of the day, all you need to tell that friend of yours who’s thinking about taking up English is that he shouldn’t trust the advertising.

Follow me. In my next post, I’m going to talk about why you’re not a loser if you only started learning a foreign language at 35 years old. (That 3-year-old niece of yours isn’t going to be fluent by the time she’s 6.)